Judge says despite name misspellings, candidate can run

By Jordan Carleo-Evangelist

Updated 9:28 pm, Monday, August 5, 2013

A state judge has ruled that a candidate misspelling his name on his own designating petitions — or at least writing it in poor penmanship — should not necessarily boot him from the ballot.

Acting state Supreme Court Justice Gerald W. Connolly last week restored Scott Mannarino to the Democratic primary ballot in Albany's 1st Ward after county elections officials disqualified him July 24 citing perceived flaws on his petitions, including alleged misspellings of his name and the name of the Democratic Party.

Mannarino's attorney, former U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, however, countered that the purported misspellings — "Mannaurino" and "Mannano" — were actually just quirks of Mannarino's handwriting.

Connolly ruled that some were indeed misspelled — or at least written in "scrawl" — but added that because Mannarino circulated the petitions himself and introduced himself to voters while he did it, there is no reason to believe the Democrats who signed to put him on the ballot would have been confused about the identity of the candidate.

"Each of these 'misspellings' arguably contains all of the letters of the petitioner's name, or, at a minimum, sufficiently approximates petitioner's name such that there is no evidence of an intent to mislead or confuse," the judge wrote in a decision dated Friday.

In total, Connolly restored 138 signatures that had been invalidated by the Albany County Board of Elections for a number of reasons, pushing Mannarino's total to 221 — well over 145-signature threshold needed to make the ballot.

Democratic Elections Commissioner Matthew Clyne defended the Board of Elections and dryly summarized the decision this way: "The court said that it doesn't matter that you can't spell your own name and that you can't read your own name (on the petition)." Clyne is also chairman of the Albany County Democratic Committee, which has made no official endorsement in the race but backed Mannarino during his 2009 bid for the seat.

Mannarino's restoration to the ballot bumps the 1st Ward race back up to a three-way primary among Mannarino, Dorcey Applyrs and Andres Rivera.